Microcomputers as a means to introduce effective management procedures in Primary Health Care: The Haiti experience
Paul Auxila, Jon Eliot Rohde · Information Technology for Development · 1989
In 1980 the Haitian Ministry of Public Heath and Population began a $35000000 five-year project supported by the United States Agency for International Development to expand and strengthen the Rural Health Delivery System of Haiti. Planners gave a high priority to the development of central management systems needed to support pay and supervise the staff of roughly 10000 employees working in over 350 institutions throughout the 15 sanitary districts of Haiti. This paper describes how simple microcomputers were used to improve acceptance and use of standardized administrative procedures in the Ministry of Health. Seven of nine full-time technical advisors recruited through a contract with Management Sciences for Health (MSH) were assigned counterparts in the Ministry of Health (MOH) to work on key areas of management and administrative procedures. Over the course of the first year and a half of project implementation situation analysis was carried out in the areas of general administration personnel budgeting and finance drug supply and logistics inventory transport and health information systems. Standard procedures were identified and explained in printed manuals memoranda and during training seminars. By 1982 the technical assistance team decided to try the introduction of microcomputers as a strategy to obtain improved adherence to administrative norms and improve management decision-making. The computer has made personal management a possible reality and it promises to save millions in the health sector money which is better allocated to providing better health care. The computer can encourage and enforce proper budgetary and accounting procedures while making financial records and record keeping far more effective easy to use and accurate. With computerized data processing rapid feedback is possible and the information system not only monitors but also facilitates improved performance throughout the entire health system.